Abstract
The paper discusses the relationship between Commons, Social Capital, and sustainability in terms of resources used, tools available, and goals to be achieved. The conceptual framework differs from the traditional one, which considers Commons and Social Capital as different resources. The paper considers Commons and Social Capital as homogeneous assets defined by the rights related to the access, use, and reproduction of collective resources, material or immaterial, which are essential to reduce the difference between private and social costs in the economic processes. This approach derives from a definition of sustainability as a private and social responsibility in reproducing all the resources used in the life processes, minimizing the waste caused by their exhaustion and loss of fertility. The paper refers to the model of Commons by the school of Elinor Ostrom to explain the nature and role of Social Capital and to observe it in different units of analysis, with particular attention to the forms of cooperative enterprise. The last part of the work outlines field research on the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain as a natural laboratory to test the theoretical hypotheses.
Highlights
The paper seeks to highlight theoretical and empirical evidence that demonstrates the link between Social Capital (SC) production and resource regeneration, which is considered the main aspect of sustainability
We propose the following definition: SC is the set of all the economic material or intangible assets, resulting from the collective decisions for producing public goods, toll goods, and common goods
The cooperative cooperative companies. enterprise and the rules universally adopted by the cooperative movement constituted the second focus of the work
Summary
The paper seeks to highlight theoretical and empirical evidence that demonstrates the link between Social Capital (SC) production and resource regeneration, which is considered the main aspect of sustainability. The case of the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain analyzed in the paper is an important natural laboratory for testing this hypothesis. The definitions of sustainability present in the literature are numerous, often ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory [1,2]. To analyze the relationship between sustainability and social capital, it is useful to collect the different approaches into three large groups, of which only one seems logically sustainable and compatible with the concept of SC. The first one is based on the search for an optimal balance of the needs and consumption of the current generation versus those of future generations. The second approach focuses on the efficiency of the circular process production–consumption–(re)production
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